Tekkonkinkreet (anime movie) - Watch-alikes

Well, I watched Tekkonkinkreet for the fourth time, in English again. Then I watched parts of it for the fifth time, this time with the commentary track on. As it turns out, the Japanese cast's relative inexperience in anime voice acting was actually something the director had done on purpose. From the sounds of things, this movie was a first (or near first) for many people - the director's first time directing, the group Plaid's first time doing a soundtrack, etc. It really is amazing that the movie got done, much less got done so well.

Anyway, as I was watching it for the fourth time, I tried to come up with a list of similar movies and TV shows. I can't think of anything that's really like Tekkonkinkreet, since it's very much unlike anything I tend to gravitate towards, but I did think up a list of movies and shows with at least a few aspects in common with this movie.

Watch-alikes:

• Tokyo Godfathers (anime movie) - On Christmas Eve, three of Tokyo's homeless (a middle-aged drunkard, a teenage girl with an attitude, and a cross-dresser) find an abandoned baby. The cross-dresser, Hana, has always wanted a baby and vows to take care of this one as though it were "her" own - in Hana's head, they'd be like a family, with the drunkard as the father, Hana as the mother, and the teenager as the older sister. Hana gets talked out of this idea easily enough, but insists that they find the baby's mother. Although there's a little bit of violence (some guys beating up homeless people for kicks), it's a pretty heart-warming movie. The biggest thing it's got in common with Tekkonkinkreet is the homeless people and a small bit with, if I remember right, a hallucination that interrupts reality. Since the director, Satoshi Kon, was also responsible for the (much darker) reality-bending Perfect Blue, it's a bit surprising that there's only one "weird bit."
• Paranoia Agent (TV series) - In this series, a mysterious kid with a bent golden bat is going around attacking people. Two detectives are investigating, trying to stop him, but their investigation uncovers a lot of strangeness. There's still something about the artwork in this show that reminds me of Tekkonkinkreet, although most people probably wouldn't agree with me. I think it's got something to do with the crazy happy smiles in the opening credits. Anyway, for the most part this series is a bit creepy, dark, and strange, although some of the episodes are darkly humorous. Some of the things that get uncovered about the characters remind me of Tekkonkinkreet. For instance, one woman discovers a hidden dark side of herself, another personality, that reminds me of Black's discovery of his dark side. Also, if you liked the aspects of Tekkonkinkreet that inspire additional thought and analysis, you might like this watch-alike best out of the four I've listed.
  
• Kakurenbo (anime movie) - This short film centers around a mysterious game only kids can play, a game of hide-and-seek in which everyone who plays disappears. If I had to pick a genre for this, I'd say something like dark horror or suspense. The CG aspects of this film are, in my opinion, more obvious than those in Tekkonkinkreet, although that doesn't mean it's not a good-looking film. In Tekkonkinkreet, Treasure Town is almost another character, and so is the dark and sinister town in this film. The detail on the buildings also reminds me of Treasure Town, although Treasure Town is more of an explosion of color than this town is. If your favorite part of Tekkonkinkreet was the action scenes, especially the scenes involving the alien assassins, then this film might be a good fit. It's got persistent and scary demons.
• Moon Child (live action Japanese movie) - This movie focuses on the relationship, over time, between Sho (a street child) and Kei (a vampire damned to walk the earth forever). Their friendship becomes strained as they both fall for the same woman, but they reunite years later. This film is most enjoyable if you already like the Japanese pop/rock stars who play the main characters - Gackt is Sho and Hyde is Kei. If you don't know who they are, or even if you do, you might find this movie to be a bit too cheesy, but get a group of friends together to watch it and I'm sure you'll still have fun. I chose this as a watch-alike because of the friendship theme, the presence of yakuza, the messed up reality bits (courtesy of a drug trip), and the action scenes. Also, the place Sho lives has some of the corrupt, yakuza-run feel of Treasure Town, although it's not nearly as gleeful about it as Treasure Town can be.
  

Well, that's about as far as I'm going to stretch trying to think up watch-alikes.

Heh, as I was setting up the links in this post, I realized that Satoshi Kon was not only the director and person who came up with the original story for Tokyo Godfathers, he also did the same things for Paranoia Agent. Basically, this list is 50% a Satoshi Kon list.

Tekkonkinkreet (anime movie)

In Tekkonkinkreet, two acrobatic, fast, and dangerous street urchins named Black and White (or Kuro and Shiro, if you're watching it in Japanese) roam Treasure Town. Yakuza and alien thugs come into the picture, and Black and White's relatively stable lives suddenly get dark and dangerous. Child-like White (who is 11 but acts younger, and strange) balances violent Black (not sure how old he is, but he acts much more mature, and he can take a Yakuza thug in a fight), and vice versa - but what happens if the two of them have to be separated?

I saw this in my library's catalog and thought something about the title seemed like it might be Japanese, despite the non-Japanese name of the director (Michael Arias). When I actually looked at the record, there was a little list of Japanese voice actors, so I figured I might as well put it on hold. When it came in, I was a little disappointed - yes, it turned out to be anime, but the art style was not the kind of thing I am usually drawn to. In fact, the kids on the cover look a bit creepy. Their smiles make me think of characters in Paranoia Agent, a creepy (but good) anime. I wasn't really sure I wanted to watch this movie, but it was from the library and therefore free, and it's not like I didn't have the time.

It's a good movie, although it takes a while before it becomes edge-of-your-seat good. The action scenes are wonderful - the animators did a great job depicting fluid, fast movement. The relationship between Black and White is very interesting. I loved the bit where White is trying to explain it and says that he and Black's hearts are broken and need screws, but White has all the screws Black needs and Black has all the screws White needs. Black watches over White and makes sure he doesn't get killed (heck, Black even dresses White, since he doesn't do it himself), and White's presence keeps Black from going out and just beating up or killing everything messing with Treasure Town (another name for this place could be Seedyville).

The first time I watched it, I used the English dub. The second time I watched it, I used the Japanese dub with subtitles. The third time, I went back to the English dub. The Japanese voices and subtitles are good (I've seen officially released anime with misspelled subtitles, so it's worth saying it when subtitles are actually decent). However, the Japanese cast was not, for me, as recognizable as the English cast. If you look in Anime News Network, many of the Japanese voice actors have only been in a handful of other things, and I don't think I recognized any of them. That doesn't mean they're not recognizable voice actors in Japan or even here - they're just not people I recognize.

The English voice cast is a different story. We've got Kamali Minter as White, who played Riku in Blood+ - I think he (she? - not sure if this is actually a child actor, or if it's a woman who's really good at child voices) actually did a better job in this movie than in Blood+. Scott Menville plays Black - I didn't recognize him from anime, but I do recognize him as Robin from Teen Titans. David Lodge wonderfully voices Suzuki - he's also Zaraki Kenpachi (the name order I'm used to, sorry) in Bleach, and Jiraiya in Naruto, so if you watch the Cartoon Network or Adult Swim you might have heard him. Yuri Lowenthal voices Dawn, a minor character - he also voices Sasuke in Naruto, Suzaku in Code Geass, and Yuri in Kyo Kara Maoh!. Stephen Jay Blum, of Cowboy Bebop fame (I feel a bit dorky saying that, but, darn it, it's true), has a small part as a doctor. That's not the whole cast, but you probably get the idea. (Actually, Anime News Network doesn't list the whole English voice cast, and I couldn't find them in the movie credits - then again, the text was so small I might've just missed it.)

It's not only a fairly prolific and decently well-known cast, it's also a well-cast cast. I love David Lodge's Suzuki so much that the Japanese Suzuki couldn't really measure up, even though he wasn't bad. Rick Gomez, who played Kimura, managed to sound like he was really, truly holding back sobs when the movie called for it - I was impressed, especially after I remembered the first episode of English-dubbed Naruto, when Iruka (voiced by Quinton Flynn) cries and it sounds horribly fake compared to the heart-breaking original Japanese version (voiced by Toshihiko Seki) that was so good it brought me to tears. This is a great-sounding English dub - and, no, I don't consider that to be an oxymoron. If you do, you probably haven't listened to a lot of the recent English dubs coming out. Although there's still a few that make me cringe, there's plenty out there that are at least as good as the original Japanese.

The Japanese track is good, the English dub is good (I prefer it over the Japanese, because I like how some of the characters sound better in English - also, I get to see all the action without having to read subtitles, too), the action is fun and often amazing, and the soundtrack is dreamy. The story occasionally gets weird, since White's view of the world is a little funky and tends to leak into reality, and Black, when he's crazy, also has some reality leakage issues. Overall, though, the movie was enjoyable and I hope to buy it when I can afford to.

I didn't watch all the extras, but I did watch the "making of" featurette. It was a bit harrowing, and probably would have been more so if I hadn't seen similar scenes in the "making of" extra on the Fullmetal Alchemist movie DVD. Michael Arias, the director, is an American who's lived in Japan for about 17 years. This is his directorial debut in anime or anything else, and, if some of the scenes in this featurette are anything to go by, this may be the last time he's ever director of an anime. With maybe a couple months to go, the movie was very bad and not even close to finished. According to one person, everyone in Japan's entire animation industry ended up pitching in to help get this thing finished. Arias held his ground over how he wanted to do a 10-second bit of animation, which apparently held things up pretty badly. At one point, a bunch of people, including Arias, were at a table discussing the badness of the movie. Arias smiled a little, a nervous smile, I think, and one of the people at the table (a producer, maybe? I can't remember) told him that this was not a laughing matter. It was a little embarrassing and uncomfortable to watch. I'm amazed that this movie actually got finished.